Hopkinson: “My father didn’t die in the service for the world to be overrun by a second-rate people”

At a time when there world is experiencing a major refugee crisis and when many governments have simultaneously been trying to slow or prevent immigration, a play on that very subject is particularly relevant. One assumes that is why the Stratford Festival is staging The Komagata Maru Incident by Sharon Pollock from 1976 about the attempt to bar 376 British subjects from India from entering British Columbia in 1914. The difficulty is that Pollock, even in the present revised version, does not sufficiently dramatize the events. Her use of the circus as a metaphor for the events is tired as a theatrical structure, at least as old as Frank Wedekind’s first Lulu play of 1895. The Komagata Maru Incident is one every Canadian should know about, but the actual history of the incident is more complex and more interesting than it is in Pollock’s play.

On May 23, 1914, the steamship Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong carrying 376 East Indian immigrants (340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus), all British subjects and most of them veterans of the British Army. This ought to have granted them right of entry to the Dominion of Canada. Yet, the ship was not allowed to dock and during the two months that the provincial and Canadian governments tried various ways to get the ship to turn back, the people on board came to starve and suffer. Finally, on July 23, 1914, the ship was forced to depart. Only 24 on board were permitted to enter Canada because they were able to prove previous residency. Upon arrival back in India those aboard were treated as criminals, arrested and sent back to their villages and forbidden to leave them.

In 1908 the Canadian government had deliberately sought ways to prevent immigration from Asia. It came up with an Order in Council that only those immigrants would be allowed in who had arrived on a “continuous journey”. Since any immigrants from Asia would naturally have to stop several times during the long voyage for fuel or food, the “continuous journey regulation”, without specifying those it meant to exclude, effective excluded any Asian immigrants. Places like British Columbia already had large numbers of Asian immigrants, but the fear was if more were allowed in they would become a majority over the white population.

Pollock gives the impression in her play that the sailing of the Komagata Maru was a purely innocent voyage of people longing to immigrate to Canada. Thus

the only immigrant we meet is a Woman (Kiran Ahluwalia) and her invisible five-year-old son who hope to join her brother who is already a Canadian.

What Pollock omits from the play is that the ship was chartered by the wealthy Singaporean fisherman Gurdit Singh Sandhu (1860-1954) deliberately to test the Canadian immigration rules. As a member of the Ghadar Party, he longed for the liberation of India from British rule. If the ship was allowed entry he would have aided the future passage of his fellow Punjabis to escape from India. But since the ship was not allowed entry this only revealed the hypocrisy of British rule and encouraged those of Indian origin already in Canada to agitate for the end of the Raj. Pollock clearly wants to focus only on the human side of the story and on the Canadian side of the politics, even though the arrest of the passengers upon arrival back in India makes more sense once we know al the facts.

Strangely enough, even though Pollock has a Woman to represent all the passengers suffering on the ship, the central character of Pollock’s play is William Hopkinson (1880-1914) the immigration inspector in charge of the Komagata Maru situation who was formerly a police officer in India where he was born. Hopkinson’s dilemma provides the only source for drama that Pollock can mine in a play that is basically about an unwavering stand-off between the Sikhs on the ship and the government.

Hopkinson (Omar Alex Khan) was the middleman between the government and those on the ship and he is torn between what he sees as inhumane treatment and the dictates of the government he is meant to enforce. Often Pollock has him speak of his contacts among the Sikhs in BC. What she omits is that he had infiltrated the BC branch of the Ghadar Party and was the government’s main informant on it. Thus, even Pollock’s central character has further complexities she denies him.

Pollock decides to leave for the climax the fact that Hopkinson’s mother was Indian, a fact he has vehemently tried to deny his whole life. Yet, had Pollock revealed this earlier it would have explained how Hopkinson could have had so many Sikh contacts and could have even visited their temple since, indeed, he could pass for Sikh. Hopkinson’s internal conflict would only have made his external conflict more understandable and more engaging. As it is Pollock simply has him receive orders and reluctantly carry them out – hardly an example of dramatic tension.

Pollock comments on the incident by placing it within two frames. All of Hopkinson’s interactions with other people are set within a brothel run by the madam Evy (Diana Tso) who is Hopkinson’s special woman. The entire play encompassing the brothel, the ship and the government is set up as if it were a circus because every time it is announced the ship will depart, a circus-like atmosphere develops on shore. In the original play, the role of the Master of Ceremonies, T.S. (meaning “The System” or “The State”) was played by a man. Here director Keira Loughran has cast the role for a First Nations woman. Quelemia Sparrow appears in native garb, doffs it for the MC uniform, still

carrying her native staff, and remains in it until the end when she again appears in native garb.

This casting choice reminds us that all non-native people, including the white people who imagine they “own” and run the country, are immigrants. Unfortunately, however, having Sparrow so ceremoniously don the MC uniform that represents The System creates a negative impression equating the First Nations people with the government even though theFirst Nations and the government are as much at odds as the government and Asian immigrants. In the long run it is a casting choice that confuses more than clarifies.

Loughran’s better idea is to have the two women of the brothel we meet, Evy and Sophie (Jasmine Chen) played by actors of Chinese ancestry. This is a logical step given the setting in Vancouver and neatly shows the hypocrisy of white men using Asian women for their pleasure even as they reject accepting more Asian immigrants. This move would be even more effective if Pollock bothered to mention that Hopkinson was married with two children, thus betraying his white wife with an Asian woman while he betrays the Asians on the ship for a white government.

Besides the play’s central problem of a lack of drama is its secondary problem of insufficient characterization. There seems to be no reason for Sophie to be in the play except to show that the brothel has at least one other inhabitant. The only purpose for the character of the German immigrant Georg (Tyrone Savage) it to show that the brothel has one other patron beside Hopkinson. Pollock has him spout racial theories of the time proving that Europeans are superior to other races and thus were through evolution meant to rule them. And Pollock uses him as a reminder that World War I will soon break out causing the question of Asian immigration to be forgotten.

Good as their acting is, we really have no idea what Georg is like other than an amiable bigot or what Sophie is like other than an amiable prostitute. Even Evy, who serves as Hopkinson’s conscience and reminder of his past, seems to have little personality other than the forcefulness Diana Tso gives her.

Quelemia Sparrow tries to make the MC an engaging character, but Pollock has laden the character with so much heavy irony it’s hard to enjoy Sparrow even as a Trickster figure. Loughran has the MC deliver orders to Hopkinson literally with a song and dance to show how unimportant the fate of the people on the ship is to the government as long as it departs. Sparrow’s best moment is when she plays an MP addressing Parliament “speaking from the heart” about why Canada should accept no more Asian immigrants. This works because Sparrow speaks these words so sincerely and with such passion, just as we have recently seen non-firebrand bigots and xenophobes do around the globe who so wholeheartedly believe in the justness of their intolerance.

Omar Alex Khan gives his all to make the character of Hopkinson work but Pollock has not built-up the character sufficiently or mined the many sources of internal conflict that could make him a more exciting figure. As it is, we can hardly imagine how this apparently mild-mannered man also works as a spy with informants within the Sikh community. Except for the one outburst (quoted as the epigraph), Pollock does not even manage to give him anything remarkable to say or any scenes of reflection. Shouldn’t we see more clearly how his many divided loyalties not only take an increasingly heavy toll on him, one that later marks him for assassination? Khan has so much presence I hope to see him again in a better-written role.

The main pleasure of the evening is the singing of Kiran Ahluwalia, whose songs tell an ancient folktale. While the meaning of the tale, depicted by barely seen shadow puppets gets lost in the course of the play, the music itself is beautiful. It makes an argument stronger than anything Pollock says that by excluding immigrants from a country also excludes the beauty of their arts and the new kinds of knowledge they bring with them.

It is a major disappointment that a play about a Canadian instance relevant to a current worldwide crisis should turn out to be so dull. Pollock’s play did do Canada a service by bringing what in 1976 was not a well-known event to public consciousness. Since then many others have tackled the subject and it would be useful to know if any have succeeded better than Pollock in bringing this important incident with all its complexities more fully to life.